"They Wanted To PARODY Frank!" Simon Jordan QUESTIONS If Lampard's Found His LEVEL At Coventry!

From 17th to 5th with Coventry, but two play-off heartbreaks on Frank Lampard's CV, are we any the wiser now to Frank's managerial level? Certainly, as is agreed largely this morning, Coventry, with a better team last night, deserved to go through, but they didn't, and Sutherland threw them out. I'm just proud of them, proud of every one of them. It's tough because they deserve to win over two gangs, absolutely, in football terms. Football's not like that. The performance of them, we dominated the first game, and everyone can say what the result was, but we dominated the game, so we had to come here and get something, and we did, and we controlled it, and we took the sting out of it, and we played, and we created, and we got our goal, and we created, and we created, and we were the team. The crowd went quiet, and then obviously the goal at the end is crucial, but I'm just proud because you can't control every little bit of football. I think he's right, Danny, isn't he? I mean, everything went to plan until Ballard got the goal, and that was the difference in Sunderland go through, but everything was going to plan. His plan was working, but where's his level? Well, I think he's still a young coach, learning. I mean, he's done a tremendous job this season. To go in when they were, what, 16th, 17th, I think, and to get them in the playoffs was 17th to 5th, far and above what I think most people thought was going to happen. So he deserves credit for that, the level of football they've played. So he's 47 years of age, nearly, and managed 250 games. Yeah, 250. Does that still qualify him as a young coach, then? Well, maybe not in age, but I think in any coaching job, you're always learning. I think the fact he only had one spell at the top level in the first, well, he went in briefly the second time at Chelsea, but the first time he was in at Chelsea, I thought he did a good job to finish in the top four, and to get to a cup final was not bad. He had a good squad, but it's still not bad. So where are you going with it? I think he's proven at this level. I don't think there's any debate at that point of managing the championship, and be quite successful at it. One playoff semi-final, one playoff final, in two attempts. Neither one of them from a hugely advantageous position. Obviously, he traded on the currency of being able to pull in some Chelsea youth team players into the Derby set-up, when Mel Morris was pushing Derby to get forward and go forward as a football club before the challenges that he had. In this situation, he picked up a slightly less preferential circumstance, because Coventry weren't in good nick. They've got an owner in there that, on the face of it, looks ambitious, but ultimately the club has got to cup semi-finals and to playoffs, but not achieved in either of them. So there's a bridesmaid mentality about it, albeit the owner must think that football is relatively easy, because he keeps on having a level of success each season that gives him opportunity and aspiration. I don't think there's any doubt that Frank can manage at this level. I think he's a decent manager at this level. I don't know whether he can manage in the Premier League. Yes, there is a good idea that the first season that Chelsea didn't have a lot of choice. They weren't able to go into the transfer market. They did spend some money on Pudicic, but that was legacy payments. And then in the second season, when he was given money, the wheels came off. And it came off relatively quickly. You know, the confrontations with Rudiger and people like that created a problem inside the dressing room. Ian Wilkes-Tuchel makes a mockery of the Lampard challenges by going on to win the Champions League four or five months later. And then the Everton situation, which I do believe, I do believe to this day that if Frank had stayed there, Everton would have got relegated. I do think that replacing Frank and putting in the dike saved Everton from getting relegated. But I think at this level, I think he was very gracious in his interview, very pragmatic, very elegant in the fact that the first thing he wanted to do, because he must have been crestfallen, was to say congratulations to Sunderland. You're in a stadium where everybody is going absolutely hysterical, and you've got to watch that and be part of it. You're 300 miles or 200 miles or 150 miles away from home, sat there in the worst place that you want to be, which is losing a playoff semi-final with virtually the last kick of a game. I think that he goes again next year. It depends what his owner does. There are suggestions that a proportion of the funding of Coventry last year was a cashing in of a sell-on of the centre forward that everyone wants to buy this season. If the owner is ambitious, then they'll go. Go again and give Frank some more resources. 20-odd million euros were spent last year on players, which is not unrespectable inside the Championship. I think the club is together again. The initial shockwaves about the reaction of Mark Robbins being fired has long since diminished. Frank is part of it now. The team is playing well. I think they can go again, but I think it's going to be difficult for him. You're in a camp of blessing in disguise mentality, Danny? Well, in some respects, I mean, no one would ever think that within the club because you're devastated, aren't you? But I think for Coventry to go again and be a real contender next season, whereas maybe it was one, you know, you've gone from 17th to playoff and then possibly jump into the Premier League. I'm not sure. I think it would have been too early. I think you've got much more chance of staying up if you go from, I mean, Simon's had experience of this, but you know, if you're a very well-established club in the Championship and winning all season and being much more confident and like, I mean, look, if you look at what he did, didn't he? I mean, if he goes up to the Premier League, you've got to take the opportunities where they come. There is no blessing in disguise. You lost the playoff semi-final. Your opportunity to get to the Premier League is there. You take it whilst it's there. It's manifest destiny. You grab what's yours and you take it whilst you can. And if you went up and they made a better fist of it, because the currency's now been set, the narrative has now been written, it's written, which is the promoted sides are crap. They're all going to get 66 points aggregated over the course of the season and everyone's going to go down with that relegation on their CV. If Frank Lampard either pushed the envelope and got them closer to staying up or kept them to stay up, his currency would have gone, pshh. Yeah, that's true. If he went into the Premier League, didn't do the nonsense of, I don't care if you did Manchester Devon on Sunday or not, or Russell Martins and people of that nature, that stuck to a philosophy irrespective of the reality of what was in front of their bleeding eyes and went down with a whimper, then no, he wouldn't be up. I think he's a pragmatist, Lampard. I think he's a sensible lad. He is sensible. The reason I'm saying that, the flip side is, you know, you go up maybe with a really inferior squad because that's just where you're at and six, seven games in he's lost everyone and been battered and all of a sudden you're out of a job after doing so wonderfully well the season before. Whereas if you would say that Sheffield United, for example, are in the play-offs, are more prepared than Coventry would have been to go up to the Premier League with the squad they've got. One thing I want to mention, and I by no means want to dampen down the euphoria around Sunderland this morning, but as we saw last night, and it was a hell of an end to the game, of course, and Sunderland fans were ecstatic, but there were some flashpoints as some Sunderland fans ran onto the pitch. Flashpoints with Coventry staff, including a shirtless Sunderland fan and Frank Lampard. Lampard slapping a phone out of the fan's hand who tried to take a selfie with him on the pitch. Now, what a moment to choose to try and do that. And Lampard's just lost it. But this again, Simon, and I'm not making a mountain out of a molehill here, it never goes away. Why would they want to celebrate on the pitch when the vast majority stayed where they were? Why can they not just follow that example and lap it up from where you viewed the game? Why do you need to go on the damn pitch? You don't have to ask them. The fact is that Sunderland were very quick to react to it, and they were very quick to get stewards out on the field, they were very quick to do anything they possibly could. And it wasn't a big pitch invasion, it wasn't a massive, it wasn't a Hillsborough a couple of years ago, when all the Sheffield Wednesday fans piled onto the pitch after winning their playoff semi-final. So it was a more mooted response, but there was always going to be people that believe that things don't apply to them, people that think they can do as they want and that they're entitled to do it. Why? Because that's society. Why do people go and burgle people's houses? Why do people do things that they shouldn't do in life? Because they're not... Why did you get scammed at an ETM? Yeah, absolutely. We legislate for these things, and if we understood why they would do it, then we'd be like them, wouldn't we? The fact that we don't understand that they do it means that we can't relate to what they do, and the challenge of it is the poor club that's trying to make sure that order is maintained. They wanted to parody Frank van Poort, they wanted to catch him at the moment. Absolutely, and Frank, get out of it, don't blame him. Some people you just can't tame or educate or influence. Just throw them out, get rid of them, end of conversation. Then they'll get to acting haste and repentant leisure. Well, I like that. Jim White, Simon Jordan, Danny Murphy, we're live in Talksport with Salco, where the trade goes. Talksport app, and on your smart speaker. Talksport.